How do people feel happy?

How do people feel happy? This is a question I often hear from my
clients. In fact, I think it’s a question many of us have. We look
around at others and think their lives are so different from ours. They
are happy, and we are not. What have they figured out that we haven’t?

One thing that consistently impedes our ability to be happy is
what we call the inner critic. Many of us, along the way, have fed and
nurtured a voice in our head that says harmful things to us. You know
the voice that tells you others are better than you, or you can’t do
something because you aren’t smart enough, or that even the good things
you have you don’t deserve and they could vanish at any moment?

“It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.” Sally Kempton

The judge that lives in our head comes from childhood. Usually
it began as messages that we either heard directly or indirectly, from
the people around us. As a child you are fully dependent on your
parents for love and acceptance, and you will do anything to get that.
We believe what our parents tell us about ourselves is true; we
internalize the way they treat us as the way we deserve to be treated.
That often becomes the source of that voice in our head that shames,
criticizes and judges us.

How do people feel happy with this constant and persistent
criticism going on? If you have thoughts that are devaluing, negative,
and abusive, and you believe them, you cannot be happy. If you don’t
believe them, you can be. Learn more about self compassion here.

How do people feel happy with a self critic in their head?

Step One

Know Your Critic’s Patterns

One skill you need have to combat these thoughts is mindfulness.
learn more about mindfulness here. Becoming aware of your own personal self critic’s patterns helps you to
separate from it. Most clients tell me they know on some level that
many of the thoughts they have aren’t true. Unfortunately, many of us
are not aware of the thoughts when we are having them. Rather than being
able to distinguish them as patterns without validity, they take us
over and rule our lives.

If you don’t ascribe value to your thoughts then they have no
value. If you do they can rule your life.
Conscious and intentional work on understanding your patterns is the
first step to silencing the inner critic. It will help you to create a
space between your thoughts, beliefs and behavior effectively giving you
more choice over how you respond. This is how you start to challenge
old scripts and patterns that are keeping you from enjoying life.

Use Journaling to Gain Insight

One good way to start becoming aware of your patterns is to
journal. Journaling about what you are thinking and how it impacts the
choices you make brings unconscious patterns into awareness. Once you
have awareness you are free to challenge those thoughts.

How do people feel happy with a self critic in their head?

Step Two

Separate your Thoughts from You

After you become aware of the patterns, you can catch yourself in
the midst of them. Labeling the patterns as the critic or the judging
thoughts (or whatever you like) gives you distance from your thoughts
and will create the space necessary to make change. Recognize that you
are lost in critical or judging thoughts and step back. You can use your
journal to do this, but soon it will become something you do in your
head as this process is happening.

How do people feel happy with a self critic in their head?

Step Three

Challenge the critic’s ideas

The critic is almost always wrong. Develop a process of
challenging the statements the critic makes. Work on this first in your
journal and later it will become an automatic process linked to the
steps above.